'I'd never seen a bobsled before': How Evan O'Hanlon's Winter Olympic dream in bobsleigh began

His bobsleigh journey began in late 2018 at Lillehammer.

The 33-year-old's first run went about as smoothly as one could hope, given he had never been in a bobsled before.

"We literally had never seen a bobsled in real life. We'd never seen a bobsled track at all," he said.

"One of the big Latvian guys that was in charge goes to me, 'Do you know how to steer'? And I was like, 'Well, if I pull this one, it goes left. And this one it goes right'. And he's like, 'Yep, see ya' and pushed us off.

"No one told me how to prepare my helmet or anything like that. So within three corners, I was breathing so hard that my helmet had started to fog up and then ... my sunglasses fell down halfway down the run and I'm now looking through dark shades and fog. So I couldn't see anything. And we still made it down, which was probably better that I couldn't see because I was just reacting to what I could feel.

"We did reasonably well on our first run down. We did crash, except my brakeman kind of fell out of the sled at the same time and he hit his head on the wall and we popped back up and made it to the bottom without actually crashing.

"We were really lucky, but the second run we crashed properly and we became real bobsledders."

The seven-time Paralympic medallist has learnt a lot since, and is aiming to make history and qualify for the Beijing Olympics next year.

January 16 is the cut-off date for qualification, at which point O'Hanlon needs enough points to be in the top 19 countries for the two-man bobsled, and top 17 countries for the four-man.

Ahead of their final races in New York's Lake Placid before the Christmas break, he said his team were sitting just outside the Olympic qualifying rankings.

"We've been going how we expected to go and where we thought we needed to be, but it just turns out everyone else is competing really well this season as well," he said.

"So we're not as well-placed as we'd like to be, but if we're thinking positive, we could still make the Games."

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Himself and the rest of the Australian men's team are competing in the North American Cup, and as the pilot he steers in both categories.

He said mentally it was tough, as he had to keep notes of the track while hitting speeds around 120km/h an hour.

"[I have] the responsibility of trying to get those boys down the ice safely," he said.

"But on the other hand, would you want to be the guy that has no control over the 120km/h object that's going down the ice you're sitting inside it? So both roles are tough, the guy in the front has the responsibility. The guy in the back has no responsibility and that's pretty tough as well.

"Athletics wasn't giving me enough of a rush anymore. When you stand at the top of the track ... there is a rush. Because you're trying to convince yourself you're going to make it to the bottom and you're trying to remember all those corners at the same time. And that's pretty fun.

"On some of those corners, they're taking like a second, or maximum two seconds, and you need to remember four or five things to do. So it's a lot of reaction, and the faster you can remember all those cues and things you need to do, the better."

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